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M. Darusha Wehm

Explorer of Worlds Real and Imagined

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  • Short Stories
    • Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion
    • Fire. Escape. – Sample
    • The Foreigner
    • Major Tom and the Lucky Lady
    • The Interview
    • Lucidity
    • Fame
    • Chekhov’s Phaser
    • Career Opportunities
  • Science Fiction
    • Beautiful Red
    • Children of Arkadia
    • Andersson Dexter
      • Self Made
      • Act of Will
      • The Beauty of Our Weapons
      • Pixels and Flesh
    • Modern Love and other stories
    • The Voyage of the White Cloud
    • Retaking Elysium
    • The Qubit Zirconium
    • Hamlet, Prince of Robots
    • Shores of a New Horizon
  • Mainstream Fiction
    • Devi Jones’ Locker
      • Packet Trade
      • Sea Change
      • Storm Cloud
      • Floating Point
    • The Home for Wayward Parrots
  • Anthologies
    • Many Worlds or The Simulacra
    • Immigrant Sci-Fi Short Stories
    • The Stars Beyond
    • Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 4
    • KeyForge: Tales From the Crucible
    • Trans-Galactic Bike Ride
    • Fireweed: Stories from the Revolution
    • Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I
    • The Dame Was Trouble
    • Dystopia Utopia Short Stories
    • Science Fiction Short Stories
    • Procyon Press Science Fiction Anthology 2016
    • Use Only As Directed
  • Games/Interactive
    • The Martian Job
    • Alexander Systems
    • You Do You
    • if ink could flow backward
  • Books

Children of Arkadia – Sample

Hardly anyone had given the Utopia Project much chance, which Raj now guessed might have been the key to its success. The project’s sponsors had money, ideals and the realistic view that radical change wasn’t about to happen on Earth any time soon. But their solution was so audacious, so expensive, that it seemed to verge on the impossible. Until it happened.

“Look,” Marian said, her finger mashed against the port. “I think I can see one of the habitats!” Raj squinted and imagined that he, too, could make out the construct in the shadow of the planet. The feeling of loss transitioned into the same euphoria Raj experienced when he’d learned that he’d been given a berth on the first transport to the colonies. Almost everyone on the Ghandi was technical — scientists or engineers. There were only spots for four political activists, each acting as the administrator for a habitat, and Raj had been chosen for one of them. The opportunity to trade everything he’d ever known for a chance at freedom.

For the first time since he was woken from the induced coma he’d been in for the two years of the trip, his head stopped hurting. Marian grabbed his arm.

“This is so exciting,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re almost home.”


Chapter Two

Laser fire, tear gas and old-fashioned lead bullets tore the air around Isabel Hernández. It wasn’t the first time she had been in a firefight, not even the first time she’d been on the losing side. But it was the first time she knew that if she didn’t get out of there right now, she wasn’t going to get out at all.

She ran toward the makeshift bunker she and her colleagues had built weeks ago, before the militia’s armoured vehicles and assault drones had rolled in, surrounding them. Her steps didn’t even falter when she saw Austin fall face down in the mud, a spray of red where the back of his head used to be.

She burst through the door and made straight for the bunk she’d shared more often than not with her now-dead ally. She grabbed her ditch-bag, felt around under the cot for Austin’s and tied them together with one hand while she fumbled for her guns with the other. She slung the bags on her back and took the first sack she could find, someone’s laundry bag. She dumped the contents on the floor and started filling the bag with anything that looked valuable. Andrea’s engagement ring, Sarge’s fancy comm unit, all the weapons she could find.

When the bag was still light enough for her to carry, she punched a hole in the wall, creating an opening to the bunker’s escape tunnel. When the militia overran the rest of them, they’d find the tunnel and come after her. She hoped her teammates would put up a better show of defence than she had.

Isabel didn’t look back at the place where she’d lived for nearly a month, full of the tangible memories of people who’d called her a confederate for the better part of a year. She ran down the tunnels with a single-minded purpose — to get out alive.

She never looked back.

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Primary Sidebar

Book cover for “Hamlet, Prince of Robots” by M. Darusha Wehm. A blue-green robot skull with a golden crown in the style of a neon sign, over a dark glitchy background. In the top left is a quote reading “Enormous fun and a real gift to lovers of Shakespeare or science fiction or both. Familiar and surprising, clever and moving.” From Kate Heartfield, author of Sunday Times bestseller The Embroidered Book.

Hamlet, Prince of Robots

Like Succession meets Blade Runner … an extremely compelling and satisfying read that allowed me to investigate my own place in our time of communion and interdependence with machines.

—Pip Adam, author of Acorn Prize winner The New Animals

Something is rotten in the state of cybernetics.

Elsinore Robotics is on the cusp of a breakthrough—the company is poised to create the first humanoid androids powered by true artificial intelligence. Their only rival, Norwegian Technologies, lost a publicly streamed contest between their flagship model, Fortinbras, and Elsinore’s HAM(let) v.1.

But when the first Hamlet model is found irreparably deactivated, the apparent victim of wild malware, the field of consumer cybernetics is thrown wide open.

Learn More

Free Stories

Major Tom and the Lucky Lady

I was balancing a cup of tea in one hand, while hanging on to the side of the companionway hatch with the other. I climbed into the cockpit sideways, compensating for the roll of the boat. I was only … Read More... about Major Tom and the Lucky Lady

Chekhov’s Phaser

I never planned to end up here. I've never planned anything, really. All my life has been like that: I see an opportunity and I take it. Sometimes that works out better than other times. So why should … Read More... about Chekhov’s Phaser

The Foreigner

I slip into the fake-leather seat, and look at my watch. I have about an hour before the shareholders' meeting, but I have to stop by the day care first, so I want to make this snappy. I've found that … Read More... about The Foreigner

Publications

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • A Most Elegant Solution
  • A Most Elegant Solution (audio)
  • A Thorn in Your Memory
  • A Wish and a Hope and a Dream
  • Alexander Systems
  • Fear of Lying
  • Force Nine
  • Good Hunting
  • Home Sick
  • Home Sick (audio)
  • Homecoming
  • I Open My Eyes
  • if ink could flow backward
  • Microfiction @Thaumatrope
  • Modern Love
  • Modern Love (audio)
  • Preventative Maintenance
  • recursion
  • Reflections on a Life Story
  • Showing the Colours (audio)
  • The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1
  • The Interview
  • The Stars Above Eos
  • War Profiteering
  • War Profiteering (audio)
  • we are all energy

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Poetry

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • 140 and Counting
  • creation myth
  • Force Nine
  • how to make time
  • if ink could flow backward
  • recursion
  • the chrononaut
  • we are all energy

Non-fiction

  • 90ways.com

Elsewhere

  • Darkly Lem
  • Many Worlds
  • Mastadon

Copyright © 2023 M. Darusha Wehm